With the two greatest champions in American skiing history, Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller, sidelined due to knee injuries, Ted Ligety has taken the opportunity to become the greatest American champion this year.

Ligety, 28, of Park City, Utah, put together two impressively fast runs Monday to win the super combined gold medal at the world alpine championships in Schladming, Austria.

Having already won the super-G at the championships, he now has a good chance of becoming a three-time winner in Schladming, as his best event – the giant slalom – will be raced on Friday.

Ligety is the best giant slalom skier in the world. He is on his way to winning his fourth season title in GS, having won four of five races this season, and is the defending world champ in the event, having won a gold medal in Garmisch, Germany, in 2011.

Ligety, who earned his fourth career world championship medal, is also an Olympic champion, having won the combined in the 2006 Olympics, when the race had a different format – one downhill run and two slalom runs.

Since the birth of the super combined – a downhill run and one slalom run – Ligety has never even been on the podium.

Until Monday.

"Today is awesome," he said. "It's definitely somewhat of a surprise. I really haven't had success in super combined in years, so to finally get a win again . . . It's a long time coming."

Ligety put himself in a strong position to win by finishing sixth – and ahead of the other strong slalom skiers – in the morning downhill. In the night slalom under the lights, Ligety mainly needed just to avoid skiing off the course or making a big mistake.

His two-run time of 2 minutes, 56.96 seconds beat runner-up Ivica Kostelic by more than a second.

"I just tried to ski as smart as I could," Ligety said. "Seeing the green light at the bottom was a really sweet feeling."

Miller, 35, who hasn't skied all this season and whose career may or may not be over, won the super combined at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, along with a silver in super-G and bronze in downhill.

Vonn, 28, had been hoping to add to her total of five world championships medals but crashed in training and is out for the season with major knee injuries. She underwent surgery in Vail, Colo., on Sunday is expected to return to the slopes next season, though whether she will be 100% healthy in time for the Sochi Olympics next February remains to be seen.

Aside from Ligety's race on Friday, the U.S. team is eagerly awaiting the world championship debut of 17-year-old sensation Mikaela Shiffrin, who will be among the favorites in the slalom on Saturday. Shiffrin is the first American skier in history to win two World Cup races before turning 18.